Mikhail Petrov

Обзор Nillion

2023-03-17T12:24:19.890Z

📲 Ссылки

Сайт: https://www.nillion.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nillionnetwork

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/nillion

Telegram: https://t.me/nillionnetwork

Whitepaper: https://nillion.docsend.com/view/7bkgvzagr6ifhwrc

📝 Описание проекта

Nillion - это распределенная система вычислений. Все мы привыкли иметь дело с блокчейном, а кто-то даже слышал про MPSC (Multi Party Secure Computation), но Nillion это ни то, ни другое. Давайте попробуем разобраться что же это.

С чем же мы имеем дело и в чём преимущество? Блокчейн это система хранения информации, в которой вся информация о транзакциях (Ledger) хранится на всех нодах - то есть каждая нода знает о каждой когда-либо проведённой транзакции. MPSC - разные ноды обрабатывают разную информацию и не хранят историю транзакций, проведённых на других нодах, при этом ноды синхронизируются друг с другом, обмениваясь информацией. Проблема блокчейна в том что данные не приватны, а проблема MPSC в том что вычисление данных занимает длительное время.

Nillion работает следующим образом: данные дробятся на части и каждая нода вычисляет только свою часть данных, не зная какие данные вычисляют другие ноды, а потом специальная нода "сборщик" собирает все вычисления вместе, при этом "сборщик" не знает какие данные он собирает - это даёт приватность. При этом ноды между собой не общаются что ускоряет обработку и система работает быстрее чем MPSC. В итоге мы имеем систему с быстрой обработкой информации и теоретико-информационной безопасностью - то есть математически доказано что система защищена от злоумышленников с неограниченными вычислительными ресурсами и неограниченным временем.

Так же Nillion разрабатывает функцию Multi-Factor Authentication - то есть доступ к данным можно будет получить за счёт нескольких факторов, или их комбинации: за счёт биометрических данных, данных геолокации, уникального идентификатора устройства (например, доступ к данным можно получить только с определенного компьютера или телефона), паролей и пинкодов.

В Nillion, в отличие от остальных известных нам примеров, существует три вида нод:

Dealer - "нарезает" введённые данные на кусочки и распределяет их для дальнейшего вычисления.

NMC - проводит вычисления частей данных.

Result - собирает все данные, обработанные NMC в единое целое.

В подробности вычисления вдаваться не будем, там много математики, а кому интересно могут почитать Whitepaper, отметим лишь что в отличие от блокчейна все вычисления производятся параллельно, что как раз и даёт прирост скорости.

Nillion не стремятся стать ещё одним "блокчейном безопасности", а наоборот хотят дополнять и объединять уже существующие блокчейны выступая в качестве Privacy-as-a-Service решения и помимо всего прочего планируется что проект займёт свою нишу в корпоративном секторе: хранения медицинских данных, корпоративных конфиденциальных данных, государственных данных. Учитывая что у основателей проекта уже есть связи в корпоративном секторе у них это может получится.

Примеры использования Nillion:

Приватные смарт-контракты. Пользователь может написать смарт-контракт в Ethereum, который будет отправлять данные для конфиденциальной обработки в Nillion и получать результат обратно в сети Ethereum.

Мульти-чейн кошелёк. Пользователь может создавать различные кошельки в различных блокчейнах, затем внести приватные ключи в кошелёк Nillion и иметь доступ к операциям с каждым своим кошельком и с различными dApp из одного интерфейса Nillion, доступ к которому можно получить с помощью Multi-Factor Authentication.

DAO. DAO смогут устраивать анонимные голосования, а так же хранить конфиденциальные данные c возможностью разграничить к ним доступ по разным условиям.

Так же стоит отметить что проект попал в программу акселерации Coinlist Seed.

🎢 Тренд

Проект затрагивает сразу несколько трендов: тренд на защиту данных и тренд на взаимодействие между блокчейнами - нарратив того что каждый блокчейн хорошо для своих целей и ни один не удовлетворяет все нужды пользователей. Так же Nillion делает ставку на корпоративный сектор: защита данных для государственного сектора, медицинских данных, финансового сектора и так далее. Если проекту удастся получить партнёров в корпоративном секторе, а это вполне возможно учитывая команду, то вероятность успеха повысится кратно.

🔔 Соцсети

Twitter: 12k

Discord: 8.7k

Telegram: 3k

Проект хорошо набирает подписчиков и основной упор делает на развитие Discord.

Из интересных подписок в твиттере: Michael Arrington (создатель фонда Arrington Capital и токена XRP), Jason Choi ранее работавший в крупном фонде The Spartan Group, Andrew Kang из Mechanism Capital, а так же ряд Defi-исследователей и инфлюенсеров с суммарным охватом аудитории в несколько сотен тысяч фолловеров.

💰Инвесторы

Проект до текущего момент разрабатывался на собственные средства - основатели мультимиллионеры, создавшие блокчейн Hedera и хорошо на этом заработавшие. Сейчас проекты начал привлекать инвестиции и список фондов будет известен позже. На сид раунде проект собрал $20M от инвесторов.

🏗 Команда

Проект пилит дрим-тим:

🔹 CTO: Conrad Whelan - инженер-основатель Uber 🔹 CEO: Alex Page - инвестиционный банкир, ранее работавший в Goldman Sachs 🔹 Slava Rubin - CEO и сооснователь Indiegogo, одной из крупнейших платформ для краудфандинга. 🔹 Andrew Masanto - основатель проектов Hedera Hashgraph ($HBAR - топ 38) и Reserve ($RSR - топ 167). 🔹 Lindsay Danas Cohen - бывшая глава юридического отдела Coinbase 🔹 Mark McDermott - работал директором по инновационному развитию в Nike.

📊 Токеномика

Токеномика не до конца разработана так как проект на ранней стадии. Известно что оценка проекта на данном раунде - $180m. Это довольно много, но стоит учитывать что и проект разрабатывается фундаментальный с явным прицелом на топ-50.

Токен будет использоваться для:

- Участия в DAO голосовании - Proof-of-Stake нод - Оплата комиссии в сети

🤼‍♂️ Конкуренты

Прямых конкурентов у проекта нет так как он покрывает сразу несколько областей. В области безопасности проект конкурирует с zk роллапами: zkSync и Starknet; В области "корпоративного" хранения данных конкурируют с XRP и Hedera, в области передачи информации между различными блокчейнами конкурируют с LayerZero. У Nillion действительно сильные конкуренты по разным фронтам, но все они решают узкоспециализированные задачи, тогда как Nillion может позволить себе гибкость и если не получится занять доминирующее положение в одной из области то прогресс в других может это перекрыть.

🔑 Заключительный вывод

У проекта отличный фундамент для реализации всех планов - достаточно финансирования и звёздный состав команды, связи в корпоративном секторе и Силиконовой долине, а значит вероятность успеха довольно велика.

Massa: a could-be-homeplace for NFT

2023-02-27T13:21:50.750Z

2022 was the greatest year for NFT so far. Many people predicted that with the market slowdown NFT will eventually die out and yet in 2023 we can see resurgence of the market. In January 2023 NFT trading volumes reached nearly $1 Billion. Funds and market analysts agree that NFTs are here to stay and 2023 could be even bigger blast.

With all that craze I believe Massa could land itself as a homeplace for a significant part of NFT market and there are several good reasons for that.

Low transaction cost

Unique approach allows Massa to keep gas fees to a fraction of a dollar (depending on the token cost). In 2021 Solana became the number one place for NFT trading due to extremely low gas cost and in 2023 Massa can repeat this success.

Fast transaction speed

Massa's architecture, called the Blockclique, scales transaction throughput up to 10,000 transactions per second while having one of the highest Nakamoto decentralization coefficient and all the security benefits. Blockclique architecture combines transaction sharding and a multithreaded block graph structure. It solves the scalability issue by parallelizing the data structure and adapting the consensus rule.

All this technology combined allows for smooth NFT sales and marketplaces with huge volume.

Ecosystem

To attract users blockchain needs developed and vibrant ecosystem of dApps. Massa developers recognize this and have drawn several development teams that are working. These projects enjoy support in the form of grants and incubation. By utilizing AssemblyScript as Massa’s smart contract language, the core team has ensured that any web developer is able to easily code smart contracts and deploy a project, without any overhead.

Autonomous Smart Contracts

Massa's unique selling point is self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement being directly written into lines of code. One of the main advantages of using autonomous smart contracts (ASC) is their ability to automate complex processes and reduce the need for intermediaries. This can lead to increased efficiency and cost savings.

There are several use cases where ASC goes along the NFT:

Membership passes. User can get an NFT to access certain community or event and can valudate it using ASC, without any need for the third-party.
Onchain generation. User can leverage power of blockchain to create procedurally generate NFT with different attributes.
Evolution of NFT. NFT are widely used in blockchain gaming to represent heroes, lands items and other stuff. With help from ASC autonomously evolving NFTs can be created. For example NFT-hero can change class and appearance depending on certain conditions pre-defined in smart class, like reaching certain level or collecting certain item.

Conclusion

Only time will tell what great usecases can be realised with Massa NFT, but one thing is certain - Massa is ready to lead the way for NFT adoption!

Massa and case of eco-friendly blockchain

2023-02-22T16:53:38.015Z

Blockchain technology has been continuously criticized for significant energy usage and a large carbon footprint. Cryptocurrency, in particular, has been a sore point with environmentalists. Bitcoin, for instance, is famed for consuming more electricity in a year than entire nations and being a reason of electricity outing in some regions of China, to the point that mining has been declared illegal.

Massa unique architecture makes it eco-friendly and allows to reduce carbon footpint immensely by comparison with other blockchains out there.

Proof-of-Stake

Bitcoin uses with Proof-Of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm - each node has to "mine" transactions to upkeep the network and that process is using a lot of energy. So much so that some Bitcoin miners went bankrupt with the price drop of token because they simply could not pay huge electricity bills.

Massa is using Proof-Of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, which is by far less demanding on the energy consumption. As a consensus algorithm, PoS uses validators that have a specific stake, which is a minimum amount of cryptocurrency tokens on the blockchain. The stake held by validators is locked into a smart contract on the cryptocurrency's blockchain to help maintain the required amount of cryptocurrency tokens.

Validators are rewarded by the cryptocurrency, typically with new tokens for participating in the PoW effort. If a validator fails to properly validate a transaction, the stake can be at risk from a reactive action known as slashing, whereby several tokens are revoked. PoS requires significantly less energy and computing power than the PoW approach. PoS also has the potential to be faster than PoW, as well as provide more scalability because it requires less computing power to achieve consensus and validate a transaction.

Storage Costs

In Massa the ledger is shared across all nodes of the network. Everyone can store data until the ledger reach 1TB. At first glance this limitation does not seem to do much. But actually it solve several problems: it allow to significantly reduce deterioration of hard disk drive. This leads to lesss resources consumption in the long run, all while simultaneously mitigating high energy usage than other blockchain that constantly require increase in disk space and reducing carbon footprint.

Carbon offset

A carbon offset credit is a transferrable instrument certified by governments or independent certification bodies to represent an emission reduction of one metric tonne of CO2. With development of blockchain technology, such as Massa, credits can be easily traded by a person or organization in the form of NFT or tokens.

Conclusion

The quest to make blockchain eco-friendly is in it's early stage and still has a long way to go. Massa is well equipped to tbecome the flagman solution for the zero-emission future.

Massa - a case for Web3 Gaming

2023-02-14T20:41:11.427Z

The gaming industry is always at the forefront of technological advancements. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in Web3 gaming, which seeks to leverage emerging technologies like the Metaverse, NFTs, and blockchain, to revolutionize the industry. By incorporating these technologies, Web3 gaming can offer gamers unprecedented opportunities and benefits that were previously unattainable.

Web3 Gaming has seen unprecedented attention from VC, for example a16z raised $600m gaming fund to finance Web3 industry.

Massa has some unique attributes that are useful to Web3 gaming and could become the leading blockchain for that. Let's dive deeper to know what makes Massa a perfect feat for future of gaming.

Massa's Blockclique architecture achieves a high Nakamoto decentralization coefficient and provides robust security, while also enabling transaction throughput of up to 10,000 transactions per second. It means that transactions are cheap and lightning fast, which is very important for gaming. Just imagine a game where all your data can be stored on a decentralized network and can be verified. It solves the issue of trust (for example you can verify that the item drop rate is indeed 2%) and the issues of games fading away and developers pulling the switch on game servers thus leaving hardcore fans without the game.

Apart from solving old pain points on-chain gaming brings fresh new capabilities. Massa is well suited for NFT and these NFTs can be added to game as User Generated Content (UGC). Most traditional gaming platforms, apart from a few like Roblox, do not prioritize user generated content (UGC). They operate as walled gardens where game assets are created and managed solely by the game creator. However, if game assets are built in an open-source format with user-level ownership, it can promote user-generated game loops and increase their potential. For game developers, this translates to a wider distribution that feeds back into the original game loop, while for users, it leads to more playable loops.

Finally, Massa Autonomous Smart Contracts would allow to add innovative game mechanics and would ease game development because developers would not have to deal with oracles and data availabality from third sources.

And to top it all off autonomus worlds can be achevied due to Massa's decentralization. After a creator develops a set of rules, governance over those rules can be delegated to the players, allowing for infinite growth potential as players grow and maintain it. If a developer proposes a new rule the player base is not a fan of, they could theoretically continue playing with the old rules instead.

The Mathematical Breakthrough ‘Nillion’: Panel Hosted By Hidden Forces Podcast and UPenn - TLDR transcription

2023-02-13T23:26:16.761Z

You can watch full video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxjbJ3gDmA

Demetri: What is Nillion and how is it different from blockchain?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

From the beginning Nillion was conceived as a compute layer not just storage. The other difference is that Nillion is a secure compute layer and that means that the nodes can have information from the different dealers but that information is not available to them. They cannot see what they're holding and they cannot see what they're processing but still they can process that information and compute the outcome ofcomputations such as authentication.

Andrew Masanto:

Nillion actually means 'a whole lot of nothing' and so what's stored on the network is literally a whole lot of nothing. We are literally on The Cutting Edge of creating a fast, secure decentralized computation Network.

Demetri: What is secure multi-party computation (MPC)? And why is Nillion so transformational?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:
One example would be signatures: I have a private key that allows me to sign a transaction and instead of having the private key in my device I split it into pieces using SMPC. Then send one piece to each one of these nodes in such a way that the nodes cannot get back to the private key from the piece they have. That's a mathematical property called information theoretic security (ITS). So I'm able to get them to sign messages for me and now I take transaction, break it again into pieces I send it to the nodes. Now each node has a piece of that transaction and of the private key and now the signing process comes.

Another example would be solving the Millionaire's problem.

But the thing is that in traditional SMPC algorithms require the nodes to exchange messages. Nodes have to send messages to each one of the other nodes in the network and has to receive a message from each one of the other nodes in the network. A lot of time gets lost in the communication and that's the major problem with SMPC. because it means that for very simple computations it's already taking a lot of time and communication is very expensive. That's why the only real applications of SMPC so far have have been niche applications where the algorithm was very simple.

Demetri: How does it work that you're able to hide data without encrypting it?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

Encryption is a form of information hiding that comes from part of cryptography that is based on Computational Theory. It's based on the fact that there are some problems which are very hard to solve and you put the problem between the attacker and the the information that you want to protect. The only way for them to get to the data is to hack or to solve this problem which is very hard.
But it's not the only way, you can create cryptographic Primitives from a different corner of maths that is called Information Theory. The trick here is not to play with the difficulty of a mathematical problem but rather to not to expose information to the attacker. Alter the information to delete traces of data so that the attacker with an infinite computational power and quantum computers cannot do anything with that encrypted message because there is no information there to exploit.

Demetri: What are some examples of areas where SMPCis currently used in the real world?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

It's been used for anti-money laundering. Different banks know something different about their customers but there's regulations preventing those banks to talk to each other. So they create an algorithm that is able to assess the risk of money laundering based on the information that is available at both ends.
Another example would be cross referencing data in Estonia. They found out that the students were failing a lot and they were thinking is that because they're stupid or is it because something else. Then they cross-reference that information with the tax records to check if they were working. In the end they confirmed that was the reason why students were failing indeed was that there were working while studying.

Andrew Masanto:

What's interesting is that in the 80s when Computing was developing immediate thought was how to create trust between people with computers? Immediately they came up with this theorem called secure multi-party computation. It could compute data, even without us knowing what the data was, and get a result where if a certain percentage of all came up with the correct answer then the the resulting computation would be correct.

That is what we call Byzantine fault. It actually underpins blockchain and decentralized computing in general. Then from another stem of thinking originated blockchain which then crystallized at 2008. There are big businesses like Fireblocks that have been offering some use cases but SMPC has been in the background . Now we're reaching a convergence because blockchain created transactions and that was the tip of the spear into the the public consciousness of decentralized and distributed trust in computing. But to calculate computations in transactions per sections doesn't make sense.
Nil message is a way to compute where you don't have the restrictions of having to send many messages to each of the nodes. In a decentralized permissionless network we would never have to talk to each other to agree to a computation as long as two thirds were honest and that'sthe Byzantine Rule.
From the blockchain chain side we borrow permissionlessness, decentralized trust and tokens. So it's the merger of the two creating something that the world has never seen before.

Alex Page:

What's interesting is that SMPC has been recognized as a very valuable piece. Scalability and computation issues has always been holding that technology back and not allowed it to grow in the same way that blockchain has. It hasn't been able to be the tip of the spear because you couldn't scale. You couldn't use it in a way that was effective because of all the messaging that would take place. Nil Message Compute (NMC) takes the asynchronous computation part from blockchain, where not all the nodes have to be doing the same thing at the same time to complete a calculation. That's one of the the improvements that NMC has added. It's taking something that people recognize as secure way to compare pieces of information and freeing it from that scalability issues.

Demetri: how you guys manage to eliminate the need for internode messaging?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

We use two Primitives. Number one is linear secret sharing - it's the mechanism to share secrets with some nodes. We use that to hide randomness that we call blinding factors. Linear secret sharing takes care of operating in a in an environment where some actors are bad. The other primitive is one-time masking. It doesn't need to do to deal with that problem so it gets more degrees of freedom for efficient computing. We require both primitives to be ITS.
If I have a secret I'll take from the network the pieces to reconstruct the randomness using the linear secret sharing and then I'll use that randomness to mask the information. From my data I will get a particle and then as I'll send that particle back to the network. and now that particle represents my data but doesn't have any traces of it. You can operate with it as if you were operating with the with the secrets directly.

Alex Page:

Thing about NMC is that we can run calculations against that information while it's in that secured form. When you think about encrypted information you have to decrypt that information then run an algorithm or calculation and then encrypt it again. In terms of computational capacity the requirements for it and the time that it takes to do that is nowhere near Nillion.

Question from the audience: How does Nillion scales?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

There is messaging during two phases. The phase where you distribute your particles takes place in parallel. And then the phase when the computation has finished and there is a particle that represents the output of that computation held by each one of the nodes. They send those particles over to designated node, which gets to reconstruct the result in parallel. It doesn't affect computation because it takes place without any message exchange. The only thing that would be affected is the cost of storage because you would need more nodes. Essentially you can scale in number of nodes which gives you more security at no price.

Question from the audience: Do you see any kind of regulations in the U.S that could stop what you're trying to do?

Andrew Masanto: One of the cases that we're building initially is GDPR compliant decentralized KYC where you have right to be forgotten.

Question from the audience: What's the biggest adversary that you see in terms of security?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

The problem that I have is at the client level, front door attacks. That kind of attack is very hard to address and there's no silver bullet.

Question from the audience: who are these nodes that you're talking? What is the incentive or the motivation for someone to be having a node on your system?

Alex Page:

We are building a permissionless network so any anybody could be a node. In terms of the structure there's going to be two different types of nodes: light nodes and full nodes. Light nodes are the holders of particles and full nodes which are going to be governed by DOW support score and a node health factor. Anyone can be a light node and to be a full node it's going to be the really good actors that are known and that are supported by decentralized network.

We are going to use staking as a mechanism to align incentives.As a node you will have to stake tokens and you are putting those tokens at risk depending on the behaviors that you take.

On top of that there is an incentive structure for nodes that are on the network where they will receive compensation in order to run a node.

Question from the audience: Would you need to go through some sort of authentication to be a full node ?

Andrew Masanto:

I think we would maybe bootstrap it like that but over time it will be down to how much you're staking, what your availability is, how many uh times been flagged.

Question from the audience: How does the network resolve node failure?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

The way to prepare the network against failures which is not malicious in nature is to add redundancy. To improve the high availability of the network the particles are replicated across multiple nodes. If one node goes down with a share that share will be available from another node that has the same copy.

Question from the audience: how are you thinking about the overall approach of getting people to understand how transformative Nillion is?

Andrew Masanto:

I genuinely think that eventually it's going to come down to utility and use and not to the technology. It will be a factor of education about that and a simpler narrative as to how to express the coolness of this technology and narratives to get people excited.

Alex Page:

It is embedded in the DNA of our project that we are building an ecosystem around this so Nillion is an infrastructure layer that we're building out. We're also building an entire ecosystem of bringing in what we call Founding Entrepreneurs.

Question from the audience: Is the objective for you to make moneyout of this project or are you going to be public good?

Andrew Masanto: We are building the base layer and we are incentivizing people to build off the off the network. The entrepreneurs who build off the network keep all their equity for themselves. They can build for-profit or not-for-profit. I see it working more like the Ethereum Foundation.

Question from the audience: Where does the data travel after the computing is done?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

you can think about Nillion as being an off chain layer because it's not a blockchain. Because Nillion has its own consensus mechanism which doesn't require messages to be exchanged you can just finish the computation deliver it to whomever wants to consume it and that's the end of it

Question from the audience: How the particles can be processed while separated without any node interaction?

Dr. Miguel de Vega:

In essence the idea is to add some blinding factors to the data so that the data is protected but those blending factors. They are going to disappear as you operate the data and what you end up with is the multiplication and addition of the secrets which is the actual result from the computation.

The next 24 months for Nillion

Andrew Masanto:

what I want is for one, but hopefully more, usecase to propagate the other usecases and then an ethereum-like effects happens. Hopefully within 24 months you start having these really interesting usecases pop up all over the network and then it becomes This Global Network of nothing.

Thyra - Solution for Web3 and decentralization

2023-02-07T17:32:02.654Z

Recently there has been many talks about Web3 and shortcomings of Web2. So why should you care about Web3 in general and Thyra in particular? Let's find out!

Web3 is a term used to describe the next generation of the internet, one that is decentralized, secure and gives users more control over their data and online identity. Decentralization is the core principle of web3 and blockchain technology. Instead of relying on centralized intermediaries like banks or internet service providers to process transactions and manage data, web3 allows individuals to interact with each other directly, without intermediaries. This is made possible by the use of blockchain that record transactions in a secure and transparent manner, making them immutable and resistant to tampering.

One of the key benefits of web3 is the ability for users to have more control over their personal data. In the current centralized web, personal information is often collected and stored by corporations, who then use it for various purposes, including targeted advertising and data mining. With web3, users have the option to store their data on a decentralized network, where they can control who has access to it and what it is used for.

Now that we know what Web3 is let's meet Massa and Thyra.

Massa is a Layer-1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain in the making. It promises to solve blockchain trilemma, that has been stuggering blockchain adoption en-masse since the inception of Bitcoin.

Thyra (entrance, front door in ancient greek) allows for decentralized website hosting and DNS resolution. It means that websites on .massa domain are resistant to censorship and will be working as long as Massa blockchain works. Truly Web3 approach to hosting where you and only you decided what to do with your website and there is no way your hosting or namespace provider can cenzor your information.

But that's not the limit of Thyra! It also allows to set up a Massa node from web interface, without the need to operate command line.

From there you can operate you node and see all the relevant statistics. You become part of the network that host decentalized websites in just couple clicks. Simplifications of the process leads the way to even more adoptions of decentralization and security of the network creating flywheel effect.

Finally, depending on the market conditions, hosting a website on .massa domain could be even cheaper that using Web2 hosting and DNS services, encouraging even more people to move to Thyra, thus increasing it’s adoption.

How Massa is solving blockchain trilemma with novel approach - part 3: Security

2023-01-30T22:46:12.131Z

This is a conclusion to my series regarding Massa's solution to blockchain trilemma. I invite you to read part one about Scalability and part two about Decentralization to have a comprehensive understanding.

Massa is a decentralized platform that enables the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). As with any decentralized system, security is a critical issue that must be addressed to ensure the integrity of the platform. Massa uses a combination of cryptographic algorithms and consensus mechanisms to secure its network and protect its users from potential attacks.

One of the key security features of Ethereum is its consensus mechanism, called Proof-Of-Stake (PoS). Nodes who want to participate in the block creation lottery will have to stake “rolls” that they buy with Massa coins. If they try to cheat by creating fake blocks or multiple blocks on the same slot, their stake will be taken away from them (slashing) and they would suffer the loss. Every 0.5s, a new slot becomes active to receive a new block of transactions. The mechanism to pick a node to build that block is randomized. Nodes are elected from a distribution pool where addresses are weighted by the amount of stake they hold.

If any malicious actor will try to disrupt the network, they will need to control over 45% of the network, which is highly unlikely due to Massa’s massive decentralization. The brilliant aspect of PoS is that if somehow they manage to aggregate more than half of the network nodes then the loose the incentive to do so since they hold the largest amount of Massa tokens and therefore they would only hurt themselves the most.

Massa also uses public key cryptography to secure transactions. Every user on the network has a unique public key that is used to identify them and a private key that is used to sign transactions. This helps to ensure that transactions are secure and cannot be altered once they have been processed. The address of an account is simply the hash of its public key.

Another element is smart-contract security: smart-contracts on Massa are executed on the blockchain and are deterministic and immutable: they can be used to enforce the terms of an agreement and to ensure that transactions are processed in a secure and transparent manner. The results of finished transactions are stored in a ledger and cannot be tampered.

One of Massa’s features that I particularly like is Read-only Execute and Call Smart Contract – it allows to simulate smart-contract execution as per normal, and read it’s effects, but without propagating them into a block.

To sum up Massa network provides cutting-edge security on several levels: consensus, cryptography and smart-contracts execution, all while providing decentralization and scalability. All this makes Massa a perfect platform for building decentralized applications.

How Massa is solving blockchain trilemma with novel approach - part 2: Decentralization

2023-01-24T23:49:35.321Z

In part one I've talked about how Massa's Blockclique architecture solves scalability aspect of blockchain trillema and now in part two lets discuss what Massa does to be truly decentralized and why is it even an issue in the first place.

So to reiterate blockchain trilemma is a quest to find a sweet spot between scalability, security and decentralization.

An argument can be made that we lived with old financial system, that is heavily centralized, for years and it has been working so war. To counter that I invite you to look at just one 2022 headline: Crypto companies crash into bankruptcy. FTX, Terra, Three Arrows Capital, Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi. What they all have in common apart from poor risk management? They were centralized entities. Ironically, all those companies were working in the industry that tries to bring decentralization to masses. In response to these crashes other centralized entities were forced to disclose their financial data to public, which is a step forward but does not solve the root cause entirely.

The foundation of the cryptocurrency industry has always been and will continue to be decentralization. The creation of Bitcoin was a direct reaction to the 2008 financial crisis, in which centralized finance repeatedly failed to serve the public. However, in the past 10 years, the reality has deviated from Satoshi's original vision as centralized exchanges have grown in popularity and control over assets. Despite this, decentralized protocols have continued to develop and mature, offering a viable alternative to centralized systems.

To be truly decentralized financial protocols need to be built on a decentralized blockchain, otherwise they can be shut down or manipulated from an underlying centralized platform.

That's where Massa steps in. Massa Labs vision is to have a product that is decentralized by design.

An indication of Massa's strong decentralization is that operating a node is not exclusive to a select few. Any person can run a node, the only requirement being possession of a small amount of Massa tokens. As indicated by a testnet hardware requirement to run a node are sparing as well. This greatly increases community involvement, removes obstacles to widespread adoption and further decentralizes the network.

The infamous crypto proverb "Not your key, not your money" did not appear out of thin air but rather was forged from a sorrowful experience of thousands of people losing millions of dollars.

To address the shortcomings of the past, financial sector has to be decentralized, which alligns perfectly with Massa's vision and purpose.

How Massa is solving blockchain trilemma with novel approach - part 1 Scalability

2023-01-20T19:21:32.900Z

Massa is a Layer-1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain in the making. It promises to solve blockchain trilemma, that has been stuggering blockchain adoption en-masse since the inception of Bitcoin.

The blockchain trilemma poses a question to developers: how we can increase scalability without weakening decentralization or security? It this article I'll dig into scalability issue.

Massa's unparalled (pun intended) architecture, called the Blockclique, scales transaction throughput up to 10,000 transactions per second while having one of the highest Nakamoto decentralization coefficient and all the security benefits.

Usually blockchain consists of the blocks, which in turn consist of transactions. When enough transactions are present the node computes them and then gathers in a block that is broadcasted to all other nodes. Blocks are produced sequentially and transactions are computed sequentially as well.

Blockclique architecture combines transaction sharding and a multithreaded block graph structure. It solves the scalability issue by parallelizing the data structure and adapting the consensus rule.

Whenever a transaction reaches the network, it gets assigned to a specific shard. Each shard is comprised of its own data, making it distinctive and independent when compared to other shards. The assignment is determined by the first few bits of the sending address of the transaction. This is called transaction sharding.

In the Blockclique architecture, blocks can be created in a number of threads. A block created in a specific thread references a parent block in each of the threads. The resulting data structure is a multithreaded directed acyclic graph of blocks (multithreaded DAG). Threads each maintain their own DAG, and the data structure provides an efficient way to store and organize blocks in the network. The DAG also helps to quickly identify incorrectly formed or invalid blocks, allowing the network to reject them.

From standpoint of a blockchain node it is not necessary to have all the latest blocks to work on a new one due to sharding. Hence it is easier to set up a node and cheaper to mantain it which even further extends the decentralisation, which is a whole topic on itself.

Simply put Massa nodes can create shards in parallel threads, whose enclosed transactions are compatible with every other shards because of the directed acyclic graph architecture. You can think of a threads as a set of a standalone blockchains that later on combain data into one to be validated.

All technical details aside Massa unique solutions allows for lower transactions, faster execution and easier scaling making it a pefect candidate to make the final step towards mass consumer adoption in our day-to-day life.

Alpha обзор: Obscuro

2022-07-18T15:55:54.242Z

Общий обзор

Ссылки

Сайт: https://obscu.ro/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/obscuronet

Discord: https://discord.gg/yQfmKeNzNd

Whitepaper: https://whitepaper.obscu.ro/obscuro-whitepaper/

Obscuro - это Layer2 rollup сети Ethereum, нацеленный на сохранение приватности транзакций. В отличие от уже существующих Optimistic и zk-rollup схем Obscuro использует собственную разработку и не ставит перед собой цель решить трилемму блокчейна - наоборот это узкоспециализированное решение заточенное под решение вопросов разглашения данных. Благодаря своей специализации проект находит компромисс между Optimistic и zk-rollup: Obscuro EVM-совместимый как Optimistic и при этом при этом предоставляет быструю финализацию транзакций и приватность как zk-rollup. Безопасность и приватность вычислений так же обеспечивается на аппаратном уровне - каждая нода сети производит вычисления в специальной изолированной и защищённой области процессора Trusted Execution Environment.

Не будем утомлять ваc техническими подробностями, вы можете самостоятельно изучить Whitepaper проекта, но отметим важный момент проработки блокчейна - он спроектирован таким образом что даже если окажется что производитель оборудования, на котором работает блокчейн, окажется не чист на руку или пострадает от взлома то блокчейн всё равно сможет продолжить свою работу. Все данные до момента взлома будут приватны, а в случае взлома блокчейн будет работать в публичном режиме, до восстановления работоспособности.

Obscuro предоставляет приватность лишь на некоторое время, настраиваемое участниками транзакции, однако через определенный срок данные станут публичными и транзакции может будет отследить и подтвердить.

Протокол использует алгоритм консенсуса Proof Of Block Inclusion (POBI). Для работы ноды необходимо стейкать нативный токен сети $OBX. Блокчейн работает циклами и каждый цикл все ноды производят три информационные составляющие:

• Вычисления текущего цикла

• Доказательство того что вычисления текущего цикла идут сразу после предыдущего цикла (для сохранения целостности данных)

• Случайно сгенерированное число

В сети предусмотрено два способа поощрения держателей нод:

1) Каждый цикл работы блокчейна награды распределяются случайным образом между всеми активными нодами. Чем больше токенов $OBX застейкано в ноде тем больше вероятность получить вознаграждение.

2) В начале каждого цикла все ноды разглашают случайно сгенерированное число и нода с наименьшим числом получает право отправить данные из L2 Obscuro в L1 Ethereum для валидации. Далее алгоритм консенсуса блокчейна проверяет предоставленные нодой доказательство того что вычисления текущего цикла идут сразу после предыдущего цикла. Если доказательства удовлетворяют механизм консенсуса то нода отправляет данные в Ethereum для финализации и получает вознаграждение.

Решаемые проблемы

На рынке существуют разные решения для приватных транзакций, однако они все решают только одну проблему - скрыть перемещение токенов с одного кошелька на другой. Команда Obscuro пошла иным путём и поэтому проект решает более широкий ряд проблем:

1) Предотвращение MEV атак - сокрытие данных о транзакции не позволяет фронтранерам извлечь выгоду.

2) Лёгкий способ добавление приватности в любое приложение с Ethereum. В отличие от zk-rollup Obscuro является EVM-эквивалетнтым блокчейном, что позволяет просто импортировать приложение и начать им пользоваться, без длительной доработки.

3) Шаг в сторону регуляторов. В отличие от других решений приватности, данные из Obscuro в конечно итоге раскрываются и становятся публичными через определенное время. Преступники не смогут использовать Obscuro для сокрытия и вывода средств так как данные рано или поздно станут публичными, а значит регуляторы и правоохранительные органы смогут их отследить.

4) Проведение закрытых аукционов. Механизм Obscuro позволяет устраивать аукционы, в которых ни один участник не будет знать ставку других участников и таким образом позволит честным образом определить рыночную цену выставляемого лота, а так же скрыть информацию об участниках на время проведения аукциона.

5) Даркпулы и OTC-сделки. Создание условий для даркпулов и OTC сделок может привлечь китов и фонды, которым необходимо по-тихому набрать или слить токены, не влияя на цену.

6) Настраиваемая приватность. Создатели смарт-контрактов смогу настроить какие данные разглашать, а какие скрыть.

Токеномика

На данном этапе токеномика окончательно не утверждена, наработки в этом направлении можно почитать по ссылке. В текущем варианте можно наблюдать довольно резкие разлоки, а значит и инфляцию токена. С другой стороны часть разлоков будет происходить не по времени, а по достижению определенных "контрольных точек" в разработке и картина может поменяться.

На текущий момент известно что токен будет нужен для стейка в ноды и оплаты комиссий в сети. Распределяться токен будет в виде наград нодам.

Команда

Команда полностью раскрыта и не скрывается, на сайте можно ознакомиться с каждым членом и его опытом. У команды внушительный опыт разработки блокчейн-систем. Так же в плюс можно занести то что они до этого работали вместе над проектом Corda.

Фонды

Информацию о фондах найти не удалось. Возможно эта информация держится в секрете до нужного момента, либо фонды пока не инвестировали в проект. В токеномике упоминается Pre-seed Investor, возможно проект по большей части проинвестирован одним человеком.

Заключение

Проект решает уникальную задачу и предоставляет функционал, который не могут предоставить другие, а за такими проектами всегда стоит следить.

Вы так же можете подать заявку на участие в тестнете.